After the End
by mountainman91
Summary: Focussing on a brave group of people who mobilized to survive the horrors of the apocalypse, this story provides a glimmer of hope in the dying world portrayed in Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece: The Road. Must read for fans. Well written. REVIEW PLEASE!
1. Chapter 1

After the End

Journal Entry: September 13, 20-.

There was an earthquake this morning. I slept through most of it, but Josiah was on watch and he said it felt much more intense than the last one. Three of the glass panels on the east greenhouse broke. We are running out of replacements.

According to the calendar, it has now been ten years since the event. Vlad says that we are now at the 'turning point' of the nuclear winter. All the debris that could be in the atmosphere, is. Apparently, that means that things will start warming up in five years or so, as the massive clouds of dust settle. All I know is that this is the darkest and coldest autumn of my life.

Three of the old goats died today. Nathan and I spent two hours butchering them. The meat is going to be lean and barely edible, but it will be meat. Already my stomach is growling. Greens are not enough to fill a man's appetite.

The scavenging party returned. They said that the road gangs are getting worse. Apparently, they saw a band of some 200 of them on the move, armed with all manner of weapons. Father is worried. He ordered everyone to get in a half hour of extra weapons practice. As such, I am now ridiculously busy replacing and repairing arrows and putting together strings. And forget about all the knives that suddenly need sharpened. At least our stocks of Dacron are holding out.

Back to work...

End Journal Entry

The September wind whipped and hummed across the ridgetops and the fallen timber that lay there. Overhead, the ashes and dust hurried along mixed with the real clouds of the dying world. It was bitterly cold, even in these mountains, and the sentries in their tree stands sat with their backs hunched against the bracing bite of it.

The compound was a squat conglomeration of buildings set against the side of a hill, well hidden from the old highway that snaked its way through and over the pass. A chain link fence topped with razor wire defined the perimeter of the makeshift colony. Seven large greenhouses huddled in the center, their windows blacked out to retain heat and conceal the light from the growlamps. Further up the hill was what had once been a ranch house built of brick and stone. Newer masonry marked where it had been 'hardened' into a truly formidable redoubt. A scattering of small workshops and houses at the foot of the hill formed the southernmost edge of the compound, while a massive steel barn cut into the easternmost flank of the hill. Numerous smaller buildings, outhouses, and pens were scattered inside the enclosed area. Periodically, a belch of smoke marked where a steam dynamo's chimney stood.

Sharid squinted and he stuck his tongue out, his face a mask of pure concentration as he ran the japanese water stone along the edges of the knife, putting the final, delicately lethal touches to the newly sharpened blade. Satisfied, he set the knife down and picked up another.

Just then, Stephen, his younger brother, came running down the stairs with a clatter of heavy hunting boots and an ungainly whirl of lanky, uncoordinated adolescent limbs. Sharid sighed internally. The workshop (he thought of it as _his_ workshop) was usually quiet and peaceful. Except when Stephen was in it.

"Sharid! Come quick! Dad's calling an all-hands meeting!"

Playing the role of a slightly disinterested older brother, Sharid stood up slowly and brushed off his leather apron. "What about?"

Stephen practically exploded with nervous excitement, "The raiders! We're gonna fight! I just know it!"

Sharid patiently allowed his younger sibling to lead him up the stairs. The main level of the Keep had originally been the main story of the old ranch-style home that had stood on this parcel of land since long before the Event. Over the past ten years, the house had been gradually converted from a typical rural residence into a veritable fortress. The lower level windows had been blocked with masonry, the roof raised, another level added, and a small tower built on one corner. Now, what had been a two bedroom finished basement housed the armory and Sharid's workshop, the uppermost story served as additional living quarters and a dining hall for the compound's residents, and this, the main level, served as a site for meetings. Right now, the meeting place was crowded. Men and women milled about, finding places to sit, whether in folding chairs or on the floor. Sharid looked around, located an empty spot, and took a seat on the carpet. Stephen pranced around for a while, weaving between bodies, and eventually found a spot to sit. Right next to his brother.

The noise died down as people settled. Benaiah, Sharid's father and the boss of the compound, stood up. He was a very tall, imposing man who exuded strength, and people naturally listened to him and followed his lead. That would serve him well in theis meeting, Sharid thought, taking in all the worried faces at a glance.

"You're probably wondering why I've called you all here." Benaiah rumbled, "I think most of you know by now what our scavenging party found out East, but for those of you who have been deliberately ignoring reality"...some of those assemble chuckled at this... "I'll tell you. Better yet, I'll let Dominick tell you." Benaiah sat down in his favorite recliner, and a slender blond man took over.

" We found an army. More specifically, it nearly found us. We were rooting around in what's left of the downtown district in Denver, when suddenly Jarod, who was on lookout, comes running in all out of sorts and tells us to take cover. We hunker down, and lo and behold, here they come. Hundreds of them, armed with spears, clubs, rifles, crossbows, you name it, all tramping down I-70 like a river of orange. That's what they wore. Orange. Orange jumpsuits, orange scarves, anything orange. They had.." Dominick's voice caught in his throat with strong revulsion, "They had...women. In chains. And..." He looked around, noticing some of the younger faces in the assembly, "Other things. They're scum. And they are more powerful than any of the colonies of survivors we've been able to establish contact with. That's all I've got, Benaiah."

Benaiah stood up. "We need to send out a party to warn people and to gather more intelligence on these buggers. We really need to let the group in Colorado Springs know about this danger, if they don't already. Dominick, I think you're the most prepared to lead a group out. Why don't you select who you want to bring?"

Dominick paused for a second. "Benaiah, can I take Sharid? He's our best archer and hunter...or at least he was while there was still game."

Sharid's jaw dropped and his heart pounded


	2. Chapter 2

After the End

Journal Entry: September 14, 20-

Everything is in readiness. We leave at dawn tomorrow morning. There are five in this scouting party. Any more and we would risk detection. Any fewer and we would be unable to protect ourselves. Dominick, myself, Bronwen, Josiah, and Ken. We have three scoped Springfield M1a's, in addition to our normal weapons. We need to move light and fast, so we carry only a week's worth of dried rations.

As we were packing, Father took me aside into his room. He reached under the bed and pulled out a holstered revolver, then set it on the bed. He looked right in my eyes. I think his words will resonate in my heart whenever I look at it.

"This is the gun of your father's father. It served him well in times of trouble. It will serve you true, if you stay true to it."

He put his hand on my shoulder and told me that he loved me and was proud of the man I had become. We prayed together for safe passage.

The revolver is an old Ruger double action that has had some custom work done on it. It is smaller and lighter than my old long-barreled single action, and it feels natural in my hands. I hope I have no occasion to use it. The sound of a gunshot would immediately give our position away.

The lamp is flickering. The kerosene well must be nearly empty. I need to sleep.

End Journal Entry

The murky blackness of night gave way grudgingly to the gray twilight that was day in this world of the dying. The wind toyed idly with the sodden gray ash that covered the blacktop, swirling it high into the air only to let it subside again in a mockery of snow fall.

The gray clad figures of the scouting party were nearly invisible as they followed the road over the pass, staying careful to remain out of direct line of sight from the highway. Sharid felt his pulse spike as the terrain continued to climb upwards, steadily gaining elevation. The granite peaks of the mountains were heavy with snow, snow that never melted, now that the sun was veiled. Soon, the party came to the saddle of the pass. For miles, there was nothing but dirty snow, foul and cold and seemingly endless. Dominick signaled a halt, "All right, everyone. You know the drill. Get your snowshoes out and buckle them on. It's gonna be a trudge from here back to timberline."

The snowfield might have passed for a lunar landscape, save for the incongruent pines that clung, dying, to the austere mountainsides. The only noise was the steady crunch of their snowshoes and the susurration of their breathing. The terrain began to slope downwards, and the mountaintops grew more and more distant. After nearly a five hour hike, the snowfield ended in a park. Before them, the land was flat. A mountain valley. The party stopped to remove their snowshoes and strap them back onto their packs. Dominick smiled, "Come on folks. Only a few more miles to the truck."

Sharid grimaced. Dominick had said that several miles ago, and this time he wasn't buying it. They would be lucky to reach the truck by the end of the day, he determined, and steeled himself for the hike to come.

It turned out that Dominick was right. It was just a few miles. The old diesel truck had been carefully parked and concealed in the sprawling ruins of a mountain chalet. Sharid and Dominick carefully dusted the new snow fall from the tarp and removed it. Ken, a squat, jocular middle aged Latino who had been a mechanic before the Event, popped the hood and started re-connecting the battery. Sharid and Josiah, who were roughly the same age, watched his deft manipulations in the innards of the machine with fascination. In a matter of minutes the engine coughed to life, spilling a cloud of thick black smoke from the tailpipe.

Dominick gestured at everyone to hop in. Sharid threw his pack into the bed of the truck, then jumped in after it, as did the younger members of the party. Ken and Bronwen took the cab, and with a tumultuous clank and the squeal of rusty suspension springs, the truck turned laboriously onto the highway.

The frigid air whipped over and past the truck bed like the freezing breath of some angered Arctic deity. Sharid hunkered lower and pulled his balaclava up over his nose. The truck had been driving for nearly three hours now, and they were just about out of the mountains. Rugged spires of rock, still ruddy in the dying daylight, twisted up out of the tortured earth in fantastical shapes. Evidence eternal of some ancient cataclysm. Sharid wondered idly how people had survived the destruction that had given this landscape its beauty.

The truck began to slow as Ken wove around the debris that littered the road more thickly here than in the high country. The all-consuming fires of the Event had spared most of the high prairie, although parts of Denver had been hit by non-nuclear warheads. That had simply meant that more people had died slowly of starvation and disease, rather than quickly in the fires. Some had headed for the mountains, not realizing that the same cataclysm that had killed the lowlands had also afflicted the mighty Rockies. Sharid wondered if there was anywhere in the world that still had sunshine...and trees. He vaguely remembered green and growing trees from before the event, but the memory was quickly becoming an academic fact rather than a living thing.

He had once spent hours on end, when he was about Stephen's age, pouring over old world atlases, marveling at the strange shapes of lands and seas and borders, stumbling clumsily over strange names. Then he had seen his father watching him, out of the corner of his eye. There had been tears on his cheeks. Sharid had not looked at the atlases again. Some feelings were too dark.

He was jolted out of his reflection when the truck came to a rather abrupt halt. Sharid banged his head against the tailgate. From his corner of the truckbed, Josiah stifled a guffaw. Sharid favored him with a withering glare. Dominick merely shook his head at the younger men's antics. Bronwen stuck her head out the window, "Sorry guys. We missed the turn." The pickup picked up again, did a U-turn, and headed back down the road, this time more slowly. The turn-off was a faded dirt track that connected the highway with the service road, cutting across the median and more than a few rules of the road. The truck bucked and creaked as it slowly followed the uneven track. Sharid steadied himself in the perilously swaying truck bed. They pulled off the road and into a grove of skeletal trees. Dominick swung out of the truck bed with practiced ease, his boots stirring up miniature clouds of dust as he landed.

"That's all she wrote, folks. The truck doesn't come any nearer to the city, or someone will hear it. The rest of this trip will be on foot. We'll make camp here, and strike out in the morning."

The feeble light of the world waned to nothing, and the darkness returned to its rightful possession.

Journal Entry: September 16, 20-

Colorado Springs is a desolation. I've been here before, and there are a few isolated communities of survivors that we are on good terms with. Usually, when a party from the Upcountry Compound (as they like to call it) comes into town, we trade and swap news. We spent four hours in the streets before we found someone. An elderly man. He was combing the downtown for weapons. Any sort of weapon. When he first saw us, he tried to hide. Then he saw our bows and the quivers on our backs and realized who we were.

The army is close. Very close. According to the old man, they have killed and burned their way clear across the country. Call themselves the Purifiers, or something like that. The two hundred man group that Dominick saw is just one task force assigned to this area. The task forces generally stay separate, uniting only when they run across something big.

Dominick got very pale when he heard that. He hasn't been very talkative since. I think it got him, somehow. I couldn't believe that that many people could survive on the road.

We are going to head northeast tomorrow morning. Dominick had us all check our weapons. We need to get a definite head count and see if we can organize some sort of resistance in the area to slow them down. He told me that some of the group might haver to stay behind and help the Springs colonies organize the defense. I am tired, and I can't justify wasting anymore flashlight batteries.

End Journal Entry

An ancient strip mall. Empty save for the mannequins that lay dismembered and naked on the floor like the dead of a long forgotten holocaust. Wind howling disconsolate through the shattered glass. Advertisements as mummified and obsolete as their creators, hanging in torn strips from their backings. Shavers. Clothing. Books. The vain pursuits of a world long dead. Colors now known only by name.

The scouting party lay quiet and invisible in what had once been an outdoor clothing store. Empty hangers and torn rags, long gone moldy and useless. Rat droppings on the floor, dry and desiccated.

Barely a hundred yards away, an army of men trudged on, nearly ten abreast across the old Interstate. There were more than two hundred of them, Sharid could tell. A lot more. Only a few hours before, the road had been choked with refugees from Denver and points farther east, fleeing the destruction that followed them. Sharid glanced at the sky. The day was beginning to end. He hoped the enemy would keep moving. If they made camp here, things could get a little dicey.

No such luck. A horn blatted harshly from the rearguard, and the river of men halted. Dominick swore under his breath.

The enemy made camp across the road, each man shuffling about his duties like a somnambulist. The scout party waited in breathless anticipation. As darkness fell, seven massive bonfires were kindled in a circle around the encampment. In the center, a large canvas tent was erected.

Dominick looked around at the anxious faces. "All right. This sucks. I'm not going to lie to you folks. But let's make lemonade out of this, all right?" They nodded.

"Good. Bronwen and Sharid, you're our quietest. I want you to go out and find how they are placing their sentries. Don't get close, and above all else, don't get spotted. We can do nothing for you if you are captured.

Sharid nodded assent. This was just his sort of thing. He had excellent night vision, and his hearing was unusually acute. Bronwen was light and fast and quiet. Together they slipped out into the night.

"Go left," He whispered in her ear, "I'll go right. Wait until they rotate sentries twice and then slip back."

"Go with God," she whispered back.

Sharid crept to the edge of the mall and peered over. They had posted guards out to the edge of the firelight, at least on this side. If he crossed the highway 300 yards past their sentry chain, he would minimize the risk of running afoul of any pickets. He set aside his bow and quiver. No need to give away his location with a quiverfull of rattling arrows.

As a child, Sharid had learned how to walk quietly on almost any terrain. It wasn't that hard, if you took your time and concentrated. He kept low. It was nearly pitch black, but he was dressed in gray, and if he stood, he could be silhouetted against the darkness. He carefully crossed the highway and took up a position just close enough to the sentry chain that he could see his enemies. Twenty on this side, twenty on the other side in a roughly circular formation. He waited and watched. Two hours later, a new shift of guards took their places. They seemed fairly alert and fresh. All of them were armed with rifles.

The second shift rotated. Four hours. The darkness was now complete, save where the ruddy flicker of the fires drove it back. Sharid got up from where he had lain, wincing at the pain as his stiff, cold joints protested. It was time to get out of here.

Just then, there was a shriek from the camp. A small figure ran from the main tent, screaming, trailing what must have been garments behind it. The sentries, startled, turned to look. Before they could react, it leapt a bonfire and streaked into the darkness. Straight towards Sharid's position.

One of the guards finally reacted and started sprinting after the fleeing child. That must be what it is, Sharid thought, a child. Oh dear Lord, he's headed straight for me.

The sentry gained on the child matching three of his strides with each of his. Sharid's hand reached for the tomahawk in his belt. The child was now very near. How could it not see him? The sentry was steadily gaining. Thirty yards, twenty, ten, seven. He grasped the handle and rose from his crouch. The child streaked past him, screeching now in surprise as well as terror. The sentry saw him. He tried to stop, to slow. Too late. The tomahawk left Sharid's gloved hand spinning. It hit home with a meaty crack, neatly splitting the man's head open. The sentry jerked spastically and fell to the ground like a puppet whose strings have been cut.

Sharid was already turning. In three strides he overtook the child and grabbed him up in his arms. Skin and bone. Wildly beating heart under the thin cotton tee. Behind him he could hear shouts. Gunfire. He ran. The world exploded in confusion and noise.


	3. Chapter 3

After the End

September 16, 20-. Midnight. Somewhere near Monument, CO.

Sharid's legs burned as he sprinted across the blacktop and up the hill towards the strip mall. Muzzle flashes ahead and above him. Shouts and cries behind him. Over all, the harsh angry concussion of gunfire. He hit the bank running, stumbled, caught himself, topped it. A bullet impacted the cinder barrier as he struggled over it, spattering his face with harsh fragments of stone. Gunfire came from inside the stripmall. He dully wondered how they had light enough to shoot. He kept running, arriving at safety breathless and staggering as one drunk. Bronwen came around the corner.

"What the..." she gasped, taking in the struggling bundle that writhed in Sharid's arms. Sharid dumped the child unceremoniously on the floor. A boy. Seven or eight. Blue eyes, long greasy hair. Clad only in a long T-shirt filthy from wear. Slightly stunned by the fall and his new surroundings, the child sat still and quiet.

Dominick came running from the storefront, a smoking rifle held at the ready. "We've got to move. Now!" Sharid scooped the child up again, swinging him across his back in a fireman's carry. They ran, five figures desperate and stumbling on the field of the night. After them came rivers of fire.

Three Hours Later

Ken sagged to the ground. His breath came in ragged gasps and his ravaged legs continued to drum the ground. They had made nearly twenty miles in a stumbling, loping stride. Dominick cast one look at the older man lying sprawled in the dirt and ashes and called a halt. As far as they could tell, they had outdistanced any pursuit. The night behind them was serene in its absolute obscurity, undisturbed by the torches that their hunters carried.

Sharid fell to his knees. His back ached. So did all of his joints. In fact, everything hurt. The child was shivering. Bronwen comforted him with soothing words of nonsense and a blanket. Sharid risked a glance at the kid. Thin to the point of emaciation, pale and knobby limbs quivering with cold and fear. There would be a time for questions. Now was not it.

Dominick beckoned for Josiah and Sharid. Covering their heads with a poncho to conceal the light, they looked at a map through a red-filtered Maglite.

"By dead reckoning, I think we're well south of Monument. We should take a three hour rest and start trekking before dawn. Should hit the ruins of the old Air Force Academy by daybreak. We'll get out of this all right. That's not what I'm worried about." In the semidarkness, Sharid saw the lines of anxiety draw tighter across the older man's face, "The problem is longterm. That army back there will be at the compound within three weeks. We only have thirty fighters. There is no way we'd be able to stop them once they got that close. We need to stop or at least slow them down here. Sharid, I need you and Josiah to stay behind and rally the Springs tribes and compounds together. Most of them are already preparing for war, but they're divided. They don't necessarily trust each other farther than they can shoot, but they _do_ trust _us_. Use that trust. Get them to send their women and children up the road to the compound. Organize a defense. Josiah", Dominick grasped the younger man's shoulder, "I know the Manitou tribe already trusts you after you delivered the gasifier to them last year. Their leader is well respected here. Get him to listen to you. Sharid, you're the Boss's son. If you let them know that, they'll at least listen. Benaiah has something of a name down here. Boys, we need this to work."

There was a pause beneath the crinkling poncho. Sharid spoke up, "Would Dad approve of this? Shouldn't we run this by him?"

Dominick thought for a moment. "Your father entrusted me with this mission. If he were in my boots, I don't see what else he could do."

Someone shook the outside of the poncho. "Hey!" Ken wheezed, still short of breath, "Don't I get to be part of your little poncho pow-wow?"

They grinned.

Journal Entry. September 19, 20-

I have never been so utterly played out. I have had more impassioned arguments, threatening exchanges, weapons pointed at me, in these few days than in my entire life. But the sundry chiefs, bosses, and hatchet men have seen reason. Ninety-five men and sixty able bodied women, all told, now stand ready to fight. We are grossly outnumbered. According to the tally that Dominick gave us before we left, there are nearly four hundred armed men in the enemy force. They stopped in Monument for a day and a half for reasons unknown. Now they come. I doubt I will get any sleep tonight. The others have left for Upcountry. I must pray for peace, and for God's sheltering hand. My soul is only safe when it is in His care.

End Journal Entry.

Unhallowed feet in the profane ashes of the dead. The consumed essence of the dead world, borne upon the wind and deposited here to be threshed by the bringers of death. They marched on, an army of the dying, pulsing up the road like some infernal disease clawing its way up the veins of a corpse long deceased. The day was brighter than normal, as if the forces that were slowly choking life and color from the earth had condescended in their murder to pause and observe this puny struggle.

The army wound its way up the highway, pushing towards the downtown area. The buildings here were taller and closer together, though it was a far cry from any Eastern city. The lines too sweeping. The spaces too generous. Here the wrecked and abandoned cars were thick, and the column had to separate to weave through. Here and there were stragglers, men breaking off in groups of two or three. Entropy. The horn blatted repeatedly, and leaders shouted. The column shivered, trying to resolve itself into a formation.

It was then that the attack came. Men collapsed suddenly or slumped slowly against their comrades. The distant crack of rifles fired. Shouts, screams. Riflemen rushing to positions, desperately searching the gray facades of the dead city with their scopes. Spearmen cowering behind the rusted hulks.

Then a shout. A line of archers appeared on the overpass, popping over the concrete barricades to unleash a deadly hail of arrows. They fell among the scattered warriors with a sibilant hiss. Here and there, men fell, clutching the killing darts and choking up their lifeblood. Deaths more terrible for their primitivity. Rifles bellowed, and an archer's head jerked back unnaturally, spraying blood. The rest quickly disappeared, just as bullets from the city around came hissing in again, seeking those who had exposed themselves to face the new threat. Shouts. Screams. The horn blatted. Slowly, the orange mass spread from a narrow column to a line of battle. Men divided into squads. The hidden rifles spoke again and again. Still the army spread inexorably, eager to find its tormentors. A keen eyed rifleman perched on the hood of a rusted hulk tensed suddenly, peering through his scope. His finger coaxed the trigger back. The rifle surged into his embrace. Far away, a body fell limp seven stories to the pavement below. The orange tide was fighting back.

War cries. From concealment, a tide of filthy, gray clad men came shrieking to assault the center of the line. Makeshift spears. Swords hammered out of leaf springs and sharpened on the abrasive curbs. Axes. Armor pieced together from rusted signs and car hoods. A whirling melee erupted. The archers stood to fire from the overpass down into the combatants, like warriors in some Homeric conflict, heedless of returning fire. Leaders at the heads of their bands like . Whirling crosscurrents of combat. Just as suddenly as they had appeared, the assailants disappeared, melting into the ruin as if it were their native element. Bodies, some clad in variegated shades of gray, others in orange. A few twitched or lay mewling at their horrid wounds. More lay still. The archers vanished from the overpass after a final, vicious exchange with the enemy.

Sharid wrapped the bandage over the burn on his hand. Josiah sat across from him in the dingy gray room, loading the last of their ammunition into freshly cleaned and oiled magazines. Down the hall, folding clots. Bloody bandages, fresh from the gaping injuries of the wounded and dying. Cries of pain. Men and women going grimly about the business of medicine with trembling, uncertain hands and fading knowledge. Here and there a shrouded body, still and cooling. The vanity of the dying warring for a few minutes more of life in a dead world.

The all familiar blatting of a hostile horn sounded in the distance, muted and distorted by the obfuscating concrete walls. Sharid swore aloud, and Josiah snapped the magazine into the well, drew back the bolt and let it snap home. The enemy had found them again. The men of the orange were battle hardened murderers, and the army they composed was now a deadly hunter with myriad eyes and ears and legs, rather than the bewildered behemoth of their fond hopes. The defenders were now on the run, ambushing when they had the luxury, standing and dying more often than not to allow others to live. Sharid picked up the rifle, clicking off the safety. His legs felt leaden and his ears still buzzed from too many rounds fired in cramped, ringing rooms. Nonetheless, he forced himself into a lumbering trot, his tack jangling around the numbed flesh of his exhausted body. Shouts and the sound of running feet through the gray corridors of the warehouse. They came out the massive, rusting doors, a ragged rearguard of thirty odd men with assorted rifles. Spearman, swordsmen, and archers, if they and their improvised arms deserved such hallowed terms, streaming away from the advancing danger. Positions found hurriedly behind planters, rusted cars, prone. The rifles spoke, hammering their hatred into the dying light, flinging dirty brass from smoking actions. They would not speak for long.


	4. Chapter 4

September 20, 20-, Manitou Springs, Colorado

_Click. _The pin struck on an empty chamber. The man in Sharid's sights kept running towards the firing line, unconscious of the miracle of his own continued existence. Sharid's pulse spiked, and his field of vision grew narrow. This one spearman. His gloved hands scrabbled at the holster, struggled with the retention strap. The button gave and he drew, steadying his outstretched arms against the hood of the car. Breathe in. Align the sights, center of mass. Wait for him to get closer. Bullets hissed past the spearman, finding their marks in the flesh of his comrades. Men falling, dying as their blood patterned the air around them. The spearman snarled, his decayed teeth like stalactites in the gaping hollow of his diseased maw. He kept moving, sprinting forward, his speartip wavering with each stride. Exhale, tighten the trigger. Sharid focussed all his attention on the front sight. His target, the world around, all blurred in the intensity of his focus. Squeeze the trigger.

A harsh staccato bark as the gun bucked in his hands. The spearman jerked at the impact. He staggered on drunkenly, the tip of his spear waving about like a conductor's rod. Then he sagged to the asphalt, seven yards away from his goal. But he was not alone, and Sharid started firing rapidly into the bristling orange phalanx that rushed ever nearer. Hands on his shoulder. A voice shouting into his ear. Josiah's voice.

"Come on, let's go!"

The hammer clicked over the empty cylinder. He leapt to his feet, backpedaling rapidly. The spearmen broke formation, surging around and over the rusted hulks of cars that blocked the way. The riflemen retreated, some turning to fire, more throwing aside all impediment and sprinting for their lives. Sharid forced his weary legs into a trot. A jog. A slow grinding run. Josiah paused a moment. Expended the last of his rounds. Screams from behind. Sporadic gunfire. The sound of metal tearing into living flesh.

They turned quickly down a sidestreet. What must have been trendy shops and cafes. Signs for a bar. Now just a hiding place. Three yards further. The sound of pursuit on their heels. Bellowing like feet. Now. Sharid threw himself flat.

Arrows hissing overhead. The thwack of broadheads in flesh. One volley. Then Sharid was on his feet, knife and tomahawk in hand. The spearmen were in disarray. Men clutching at the shafts that killed them. Dark blood on the ashen concrete. A great shout rising from the empty-windowed storefronts as swordsmen and clubmen leapt to the assault. Men in orange and men in gray. Struggling knots of combatants, the ash rising up around their rag-swathed feet.

A filthy snarling mask of dirt and hatred. Knife held reversed, grasping hands. Ragged filthy parka. Putrescence of rotting meat borne upon diseased breath. Sharid lunged at the man, punching with the blade of the tomahawk. Slash upward with the knife. The orange clad man fell, his face destroyed, clutching at his exposed innards. Death horrible and immediate.

And still the gray day marched on.

Journal Entry: September 23, 20-

Dad came in this morning with everyone who could be spared from the Compound, armed to the teeth. Thirty men and women, rifle armed and trained. That brings our total fighting strength to roughly seventy five souls. We lost many fighters in Colorado Springs. The enemy has pushed us up along the highway and into the foothills. It is bitterly cold and overcast, and every night we lose some of the wounded to the chill, despite our best efforts. Supplies are running low. Food, bandages, medicine, ammunition. All of which are more precious than gold. With so many away, the greenhouses are nearly untended, and this winter's crop will be lean.

We managed to divert and destroy a platoon strength group of them in Manitou, but that is the only real victory we've been able to claim since the first day. The chieftains have not complained, or even really bickered between themselves. I think that the threat of mutual annihilation may finally bring us all together. Josiah and I are no longer in command, and the physical and emotional relief is palpable. For both of us. I never want to lead men in battle again. Every decision I made cost lives. And that is a weight I'd rather not bear anymore.

End Journal Entry

September 24, 20-. Somewhere outside of Woodland Park.

Brooding mountains, invisible in the darkness. The air still and cold and thin and sparse as gold in a pauper's den. Fires flickered on the black tarmac of the road. Sentries paced their rounds, faces swathed against the cold, eyes bright and alert as they peered over their filthy wrappings, spears clutched tight in gloved hands. But theirs were not the only eyes in the darkness.

Sharid crouched low, willing his profile to disappear and dissolve against the terrain. The fires cast just enough light out this far that a wary picket might make him out. Thirty yards to the perimeter. Painstakingly, he inched his way forward, an arrow nocked on his bowstring, the broadhead smoke blackened for stealth. Twenty five. He flattened himself out as much as possible as the sentry's eyes swept across. Close enough. Wait for the man's eyes to go elsewhere. Wait for the signal.

The harsh cough of a crow shattered the night stillness. The sentry's head whipped around toward the origin of the noise. Now. Sharid stood, bringing the bow to full draw. Eyes locked on the target. Let the index finger touch the corner of the mouth for a fleeting second. Release. Follow through. As natural as breathing. Far more deadly.

The shaft found its home, and the spear dropped as the sentry's hands flew to his throat. He twitched as his lifeblood ran between his grasping fingers. Shouts and screams and gurgling wails as men dropped all around the camp. The hiss of feathered death. A sharp fusillade of riflery. The encamped host erupted into confusion like an anthill disturbed. Beneath the thick fleece of his facecloth, Sharid smiled bitterly as he nocked another arrow to his string, found a target, loosed. "Welcome to colorful Colorado, suckers." Draw, aim, loose. Draw, aim loose. Silent death pouring in from all angles. Riflemen picking off men silhouetted against the ruddy glow of the fires.

A horn blew, cutting through the swelling chaos. The signal to withdraw. Sharid turned and ran headlong into the night. Other shadowy figures, half seen , half guessed at, ran pell-mell through the darkness. The rendezvous point was ahead. Already, he could hear the enemy marshaling behind him. Shouted orders. Cries of pursuit. Sharid forced himself to run faster. Feet hammering into the ash and the packed earth like the sledge of some infernal blacksmith.

And always the sound of death behind.


	5. Chapter 5

September 30, 20-. Pike National Forest

Dreams, sanguinary and terrifying. All the more frightening for being remembered nightmares. The spearman in Manitou slumping to the ground in a widening pool of his own blood and viscera. The blood crawling up to his own unstained hands from knife edge and the dripping beak of the tomahawk. Crawling into his eye sockets, into his mouth. Drowning him in a warm scarlet blanket. The wounded man who had died in his cradling arms, coughing up the pink flesh of his own ruptured lungs. Smiling in death as his distraught soul fled its cooling, bleeding, stinking home. Smiling. As he would have at his child's birthday. When the world could afford such frivolities as mirth.

Consciousness came slowly, fitfully with the gray light of dawn. Sharid rolled out of the crinkling canvas embrace of the bivouac sack. New formed frost fell from the surface of the tarp, freezing the tender skin of his back and neck. Grin and bear it. He ruefully pulled the hood of the parka up to where it should have been. Frost crunched beneath his feet. The Woodland Park raid had been effective. The invader's camp had been completely surprised, and many captives freed. The pickets' throats slit and sentries garroted. _Or shot_, Sharid thought ruefully, remembering the noise of the broadhead tipped arrow hitting home. The way the man had just stood there while his lifeblood poured between filthy, grasping fingers.

Their camp was well concealed in the pines. Clusters of men in drab nests of blankets and tarps. Like dispossessed veterans of some forgotten war. Mendicant soldiers. Coloradans were not the only ones who could raid, it turned out. Thrice they had run across parties of the enemy, wary and silent in the deathly woods. Searching. None of the orange clad men had made it back to report their position. Their frozen bodies were stacked like cordwood outside the camp. The enemy was combing the forests and the mountainsides for them. With the manpower they had, it was only a matter of time until the bivouac was discovered.

Benaiah's lean-to cowered beneath the sheltering boughs of an old-growth Ponderosa. Sharid ducked beneath a low-hanging branch, hearing the stiff sharp needles rasp across the canvas hood of his parka. Still stubbornly clinging to their branches. The lean-to was built low to the ground. His father had to practically fold in half to enter it. But it was dry. And it kept the maps safe.

The crunch of his boots across the carpet of dry needles and twigs caused his father to look up suddenly. He smiled when he saw Sharid.

"Sleep well?"

Sharid shrugged. "Ok, I guess." He glanced down at his feet for a second. "Keep having these dreams. Awful stuff."

Benaiah's smile faded, became knowing. "I know. The dreams fade after a while. They don't go away completely. But they do fade. Here." He patted the ground beside him. "Pull up a chair." Sharid squatted on the packed dirt, still warm from where his father had slept.

Benaiah reached over and pulled his son to his side. Sharid stiffened momentarily, then relaxed. His father was usually a stern man, not given to many words, or to physical affection.

"I'm sorry that this..." his gesture seemed to take in everything...the dead trees, the ash-streaked snow, the hooded shapes huddled against the cold, "Is all the future I can promise you. I keep trying to tell myself I'm in control, and I'm not. Grandpa and I, we fought to pull people together. To survive. The greenhouses, the generators, the steam dynamo, the gasifiers. And now it's all in danger."

"We might still win, Dad. They haven't beaten us yet. We've killed quite a few of them." Sharid's words felt flat and hollow even as he said them, and they withered away in the crisp dry air. Benaiah smiled, but his eyes remained dark. Intense with a foreboding that he could only try to hide from his son. His words belied the truth that Sharid clearly saw. "Sure, we might still win. We just need to keep them on their toes. And guessing."

Journal Entry: October 5th, 20-

Last night they found us again. Our sentries spotted them before they came too close, and the whole camp evacuated. Even the survivors from the Springs know how to move quickly and quietly enough in the woods. There was no fighting, although I gave Carlos a bloody nose when he tried to wake me. Thought he was trying to slit my throat. I'm tired. I haven't had a good night's sleep in a week. No one has. People are making mistakes. The enemy is fresh, rested. We lost five men yesterday afternoon. Survivors from the Springs. Stumbled right into the enemy. Josiah came on their bodies. What was left. I want to write more, but Dad wants me. Another raid.

-End Journal Entry

The orange clad figure cursed as his boot punched through the icy thick crust of the snow and disappeared into the thick drift. The snow was thick in the high country, and the platoon was well above treeline. They had been surprised by yet another night attack. The spearman spat viciously and tightened his grip on the shaft. Cowardly bastards, running and hiding like that. At least the militia in Denver had stood and fought. And died. He knew that he had absorbed their strength and courage through their flesh. He didn't want to eat any of these wretches. Scrawny buggers, anyhow.

Absorbed in his thoughts, the spearman failed to notice the slightly off color patch of snow that he nearly stepped on. Or the one thirty yards to the right. Didn't see how the wind affected those areas somewhat differently than it did the rest of the snowbank. And so he passed on, and so did the other wary, haggard scouts, as the main column of march drew nearer. Nearer. Sharid could feel the tramp of their boots in his soul. In his bones, despite the numbness that had gradually crept into his limbs. Spread out on a bed of snow. Like a cadaver on ice. A metaphor for the larger world.

Then he heard it. The signal. A piercing whistle only just within the registers of human hearing. Perhaps the enemy heard, perhaps they failed to hear. No matter. It was time. Sharid threw the tarpaulin aside, rolling into a crouch, his stiff limbs protesting at every move. Grasp the bow by the riser, wet with snow. Nock an arrow and bring it to full draw, canting the limbs to keep them clear of the ground. The mass of men stopped momentarily, startled by his sudden appearance. He inhaled deeply and exhaled. One of the orange clad figures fumbled at his rifle, sent a quickly aimed shot caroming in Sharid's general direction. His fingers snapped open, and the bow surged gently in his hand. The rifleman flinched, but not enough. His head whipped back as Sharid's arrow found its home in his right eye. Sharid pulled another shaft out, looking for a target. The column of men was disintegrating into chaos as figures emerged from the snow and sent arrows whipping into their large, densely packed target. Men fell, or clutched their spraying wounds, screaming mingled pain and defiance in the thin cold air. Crimson splays on the pure snow.

These were no animals. They were warriors. Surprised, injured, they neither broke nor froze. They reacted. Sharid's eyes widened as the huddled mass of men suddenly burst out in all directions, the orange clad warriors snarling as they bounded towards their tormentors through the thick snow. Sharid pulled three arrows out of the quiver at his back and jammed them tip-first into the snow, firing in rapid succession. Nock, draw, loose. Nock, draw, loose. A scream as one of the archers was impaled. Harsh crack of a rifle, and the man to his left slumped limply. Then the swelling blat of a rams-horn trumpet.

"Back! Retreat!" He stood, knees popping in protest. He waved his arms. "Down the mountain!"

Blank stares. Eyes burning with terror. A confusion of shouts and commands as men flailed through the thick and unyielding snow. The invaders hard after them, shouting, shooting, killing. Sharid drew in a ragged breath through the wet fabric of his facecloth. The drifts so thick. He should have chosen a different retreat azimuth. Something hissed past his ear. He dropped and rolled, unzipping his parka and pulling the revolver even as he turned. Three men ran past him. Four. Five. Seven out of fifteen left alive. He blinked and rubbed his eyes with the backs of gloved hands, and the world swam back into focus. Thirteen in the orange. The nearest ten yards away. These things he knew at a glance. He lined up the sights and squeezed the trigger three times in rapid succession, barrel braced at the edge of the crater his body had made in the crusted snow.

The first man stumbled back, his own blood tracing behind him in a crimson spray. From this distance, Sharid could read his face as pain flared across it and then...blankness as his muscles went slack and he collapsed. Memories all the worse for their freshness. Something went hissing through the drift an inch and a half past Sharid's head. He snarled and blind fired, only hand and gun showing above the verge. Shouted curses. Then a faint hissing. He turned to rise, another round shrieking past. Then a deafening explosion. He was lifted up and thrown forward as if by an invisible hand. Hit the ground hard. Rolled once, twice. Reality swam away into the gray distance.


End file.
